Problems and Management Decisions of New Bulgarian Farmers

The paper presents the organisational changes in agriculture and makes evaluation of management decisions and basic problems of Bulgarian family farms, cooperatives and partnerships. The paper is based on the field research
work of the authors on the project “Comparative analysis of functioning and management of private production
structures in agrarian sector” in Bulgaria (1999-2000), granted by the research program of the University for
National and World Economy - Sofia. In first part of the paper farm structure is treated in two aspects: management
organisation (legal form) and farm size. Independently of relatively small territory in Bulgaria existing and
functioning together the both European farm models. In Northeast Bulgaria predominates the large size farm with
typical characterizations for “Northern model”. The “Southern model” predominates not only in the mountain
and semi mountain areas. Very small and small holdings are functioning in everyone villages. The analysis in second part is on data of survey in several regions in country.
There are 50 family farms and 55 agricultural production cooperatives with typical production specialization
and farm size. The survey includes three groups of
questions about production resources, management decisions, organizational problems, production results and others. The last part of paper shows tendencies and alternatives for improvement of the management adaptivity and competitiveness of the newly formed
organisations.